Self-reported post-operative recovery in children : development of an instrument

• Rationale, aims and objectives: According to the United Nations (1989) , hildren have the right to be heard and to have their opinions respected. Since post-operative recovery is an individual and subjective experience and patient-reported outcome measures are considered important, our aim was to develop and test an instrument to measure self-reported quality of recovery in children after surgical procedures.Methods: Development of the instrument Postoperative Recovery in Children (PRiC) was influenced by the Quality of Recovery-24, for use in adults. Eighteen children and nine professionals validated the items with respect to content and language. A photo question- naire was developed to determine whether the children’s participation would increase compared with the text questionnaire. The final instrument was distributed consecutively to 390 children, ages 4–12 years, who underwent tonsil surgery at four hospitals in Sweden.Results: A total o f238 children with a mean age of 6.5 years participated. According to the parents, 23% circled the answers themselves and 59% participated to a significant degree. However, there was no significant difference in participation between those who received a photo versus a text questionnaire. Psychometric tests of the instrument showed that Cronbach’s alpha for the total instrument was 0.83 and the item-total correlations for 22 of the items were ≥0.20.Conclusion: Our results support use of the PRiC instrument to assess and follow-up on children’s self-reported post-operative recovery after tonsil operation, both in clinical praxis as well in research. 

Subject headings

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Omvårdnad (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Nursing (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Pediatrik (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Pediatrics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Children

instrument

post-operative recovery

self-report

Caring sciences

Omvårdnadsvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)